Monday, November 24, 2014

Being an Effective Manager means being an Effective Coach

Being an Effective Manager means being an Effective Coach. A coach needs to know very well each client. They will all be different, they will have different objectives, they will be able to achieve different goals. However all of clients must be willing to be trained and coached. The coach bases his individual plan on the client existing and needed skills, the ability to perform based on personal goals and the personal will of the individual to succeed. The relationship is bidirectional though, if the will is poor on any side, and/or the ability does not match expected goals, and/or if the skills does not match expected level then the client and the coach are not a good fit for each other.

Management is not any different. Each person is valuable one way or another but nobody is a good match for all type of jobs. The will is necessary, no brainer. As team member is expected to be driven by a will to contribute to the culture, value and profit of the whole group. Skill and Ability are a different story.

The difference between skill and ability is very subtle. I tend to think that a team member has an ability problem when all the manager resources to improve the skills of such "direct" have been tried without success. Of course the development of skills and ability of the "direct" will be affected by the skills and ability of the manager. So then how can we be effective managers?

To be effective managers we need to know each of our directs. They are all different and so in order to set them all for the biggest possible success we need to work in a personalized way with them. I think Managers have a lot to learn from the Montessori school. This is a daily task, if you are or want to be a manager you have to love teaching and caring for others successes.